NO THIRD WAY FOR LABOUR

Unions need Blair more than Blair needs them (Richard Rosser, July 3, 2003, Financial Times)

The Blair government has provided the trade union movement with a platform for growth in membership: low inflation, low
unemployment, low interest rates, sustained growth, more jobs, rights to representation and recognition, the minimum wage, membership of the European Union's Social Chapter and increasing investment in the public services.

The problem - some would say the crisis - for the trade union movement is that it has not yet been able to take advantage of this more favourable environment (much of which would not survive a change of government) to rebuild membership and, with it, influence.

A returning Conservative government would undoubtedly renew its hostility to trade unionism and repeal or weaken as much of the present
government's employment legislation as possible, including the statutory rights to trade union representation and recognition. The minimum wage would be unlikely to rise, assuming it survived at all, and the significant increases in expenditure that have been aimed at improving Britain's public services and the position of the less well off would be reversed.

To pursue trade union objectives in a way that could undermine the Labour government is to score an avoidable own goal. This cannot be in the best interests of trade unions and our members, whatever the immediate short-term attraction of extra media coverage. That is why the TSSA conference voted against moves to disaffiliate from Labour. We will stay in the party and will make our case as forcefully as we can.

A Labour government and the Labour party need the support, human and financial, provided by the trade union link. But the trade union movement would do well to take stock for a moment, look beyond the short term and recognise that it needs a Labour government just as much as, if not more than, a Labour government needs trade unions.

In its belief in globalized free trade and in government efficiency, the Third Way is necessarily the enemy of Labour. Trade unions generally aren't interested in the economic health of the nation or even the broad interests of their own members but in ever higher wages and more promiscuous "work" rules. The freer an economy, especially if free on a global scale, the more likely there's someone else willing to do your job, just as well, for less and making fewer demands on the employer. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 5, 2003 5:57 PM